Herman Cain Opposes Higher $9 Minimum Wage Proposed By Obama

Nevil Cavuto starts off by pointing out that out “of the eight states with an $8 or higher minimum wage, look at their unemployment rates. They’re all well above the national average.” He’s talking about California ($8 and 9.8 percent), Connecticut ($8.25 and 8.6 percent), Washington D.C. ($8.25 and 8.5 percent), Illinois ($8.25 and 8.7 percent), Nevada ($8.25 and 10.2 percent), and Oregon ($8.95 and 8.4 percent). The national unemployment rate is currently at 7.9 percent.

Herman Cain was asked how businesses might respond to a $9 minimum wage:

“Well, they’re either going to have people work less hours or they’re going to hire less people. That’s typically what happens. I saw it when I was at Godfather’s, when I was at Burger King. I saw it when I was the president of the National Restaurant Association.

“Here’s where the president is dead wrong. If you were to force a minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $9, guess what? They will still be living in poverty. Raising the minimum wage is not going to get anybody out of poverty. Most of the reliable studies out there, Neil, shows that there’s going to be job reduction for the people who need those jobs the most and those are the people with the least amount of skills.”

Herman Cain then goes on to point out how the average salary in the United States has dropped by around $4,000 in the last couple years. He claims that small profit margins and Obamacare taxes have left businesses with little wiggle room. Thus, the only option would be to raise prices, which raises the cost of living, and those living on minimum wages incomes would be back where they started.

So how exactly does Herman Cain propose to fix this problem?

“I want people to make more than $9-an-hour. How do you get people to make more than $9-an-hour? You create a robust, growing economy, which is what this president and this administration, they have not done that. So now they are trying to paint lipstick on this flawed economic canvas by saying let’s raise the minimum wage and put all of those other programs out there that you talked about earlier and say it’s not going to cost a dime. Most of the American people that I have figured out, Neil, are not that stupid. Some people are, but most people are not that stupid to believe that.”

Over at the Huffington Post, they share an analysis which claims that when the minimum wage is raised an extreme minority of people do lose jobs but overall “the vast majority get a raise and that anyone blithely citing the classical model…is speaking from prejudice, not from the evidence.” They also point out that “47 percent of affected workers are full-timers” and 84 percent are not teenagers doing temp jobs, so this change would affect a good number of Americans. The Daily Beast points out that “the minimum wage would have to be increased from $7.25 to $10.55 per hour to make up the value lost to inflation.”

Do you agree with Herman Cain that it’s “stupid” to want to raise the Federal minimum wage to $9 an hour?